


A Skeleton of Something More

by asparagus_writes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Force-Sensitive Padmé Amidala, The Force, Unplanned Pregnancy, dubious manipulation of the clone wars timeline for dramatic effect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25166608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagus_writes/pseuds/asparagus_writes
Summary: Padmé knows that she decided she would wait to tell Anakin about the baby until they see each other again, but she’s starting to regret that decision. There’s no one else she could possibly go to for help with this. Aside from the normal symptoms of pregnancy, she’s started to see things. Hear things. Feel things. Strange things. Dark things.She thinks it might be the Force.A series of vignettes in which carrying two force-sensitive babies makes Padmé at least mildly force-sensitive herself.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 18
Kudos: 113





	A Skeleton of Something More

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a Sleeping At Last song of the same name.

Month 1

The first time it happens, she doesn’t even know she is pregnant yet. She barely even notices it; she brushes it off as a coincidence, one of those things that just happens sometimes. But when she looks back on it several months later, Padmé thinks this must have been the first time she felt the Force.

It has been almost two weeks since she has seen her husband, so she’s in the confusing space between the intense longing to see him again that lasts for the first week or so and the weary worry that he will never come back that sets in at about a month. Times like these, she will get caught up in her work for a few hours and forget that anything is even out of place, like there isn’t an Anakin shaped void in her heart, and then she’ll think of something or someone will say something that reminds her that she misses him.

Padmé is sitting in her senate office, taking advantage of a few minutes in between meetings, working on her draft of the clone citizenship bill that she worries is more of a pipe dream than anything else. Puzzling over the issue she always gets stuck on when she thinks of this project—how to pay for and distribute the social support the clone troopers will need if ( _when_ , she tells herself, it has to be _when_ ) the war ends—she suddenly gets a strange feeling. It’s like the feeling you get when you’re being watched, except not quite as sinister. Like a fruit fly buzzing quickly across your field of vision, but only for a moment so that your eyes can’t really track it.

The office is completely silent and still, but Padmé lifts her eyes from the datapad she was reading and looks to the door.

A moment later, Moteé enters the room to inform her that Senator Organa is here for their weekly strategy meeting. She already knew that. _Of course_ she already knew that because this is when they always meet and Bail is a punctual man and it is eleven o’clock on the dot. She already knew he had just arrived but it was definitely _only_ because of these things.

Nothing is wrong, and everything is fine, and she doesn’t feel odd at all (anymore), so she stands up and smiles warmly at Bail, her closest friend who isn’t a member of her security staff or a family member, as he enters. She asks him if he is well. He says he is, and then turns the pleasantry back on her. She says she is well too, because it’s as true as it can be, right now, with the war on and the secret she has been keeping from him for years.

They sit down and get down to business, exactly like they always do.

* * *

Month 2

Padmé is late. Really late. At first she tries to tell herself it is stress. It’s true: she is stressed. But she is not any more stressed than she has been any other month since Geonosis. The explanation—which is truly the most likely one—is not satisfying to her, even though she and Anakin have always been careful. They’re not stupid; they know that their situation is precarious enough as it is without a child thrown in.

She spends a week trying to work up the courage to ask one of her handmaidens to buy her a pregnancy test, or to go buy one herself, which would be dangerous (what if someone recognized her?). Then she wakes up one day, nauseous. This too, she could explain away: it is stress or some sort of illness going around the Senate. It’s not even so bad that she can’t hide it from her staff. But, that morning, after she knows Typho has done his daily sweep of the apartment for bugs, she asks Dormé, who is doing her hair, if she could please buy her a pregnancy test while she’s out today.

Dormé’s hands imperceptibly pause in their work. Padmé looks at her friend’s face in the mirror. Her eyes are still focused on her task, and from what Padmé can see, her expression hasn’t changed. The training all handmaidens (and Padmé herself, though it was long ago) get ensures that she can take the surprising request with a straight face. Then, Dormé’s eyes come up to meet Padmé’s, and Padmé has to look away quickly. Her staff can read her well, and she doesn’t want Dormé to be able to see the fear and shame and inexplicable certainty in her eyes.

“Of course, Milady,” Dormé replies, as if she had asked her to buy some more flimsi for the office and not a personal item that can have only one, scandalous purpose, “do we need anything else?”

“Threepio can tell you if there’s anything,” Padmé says, staring at her hands folded in her lap.

That night, she comes home to three slim boxes sitting on the counter of her refresher. Dormé didn’t need to buy three—but three is a lucky number on Naboo. Padmé gets the uncomfortable feeling she’s only going need to one to be certain. She pees on the stick, and the instructions say that it will take a few minutes for the results to show up on the little screen.

When she goes to set the test on the counter to wait, though, she swears she can already see arubesh characters there. _Positive_. It shouldn’t be possible this early, but she feels something flutter inside her: something bright and beautiful and alive.

Then she blinks and the test is blank, still.

A few minutes later, the letters don’t go away, no matter how many times she blinks.

* * *

Month 3

Padmé dares to hope that she might have avoided the worst of the morning sickness she knows many women experience when pregnant. Sola had told her that she suffered from it when she was carrying Ryoo, and then again with Pooja. She recalls her mother saying something about it once too. Padmé thinks it must run in families, to some extent. She wishes she could ask them about it, so they could tell her about some traditional folk remedy, perhaps there’s some kind of special tea made from Nubian herbs, to make her feel more connected to the planet she serves even as she spends most of her time parsecs away from it, almost drowning in the bustle and cutthroat politics of Coruscant.

And isn’t that insult to injury, that she can’t even tell her family about the baby? Even if they knew she was married, even if it was safe to tell them, _Anakin_ doesn’t even know. She’s decided she wants to tell him in person, because she knows how distracted he would get if he knew—if she told him over hologram in the middle of some important battle. Children are considered a blessing in Nubian culture, something to be celebrated and doted over by their entire extended family before they are even born. But tradition is not as important as making sure her husband (the baby’s _father_ ) stays safe and alive enough to come home to them.

There are plenty more mornings after that first one when she wakes up feeling queasy, but so far, she hasn’t done more than _felt_ sick. Padmé can handle that. Her luck runs out eventually, although she’s not quite sure that it’s the fault of her pregnancy hormones when it does.

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is a very busy man. So much so that even though Padmé is nominally one of his supporters, the senator from his home planet, she rarely spends much time in the same room as him, besides when he presides over sessions of the senate, which hardly counts. The first time she has a meeting with him while she is pregnant, she is already three months along.

Padmé is not alone: she’s come with senators Mothma and Organa to discuss a bill that will fund and set up more refugee camps in the Mid and Outer Rims. Her part is not to delicately argue that the Republic’s credits are being wastefully, and even immorally, spent on more clone troopers, ships, and guns—that is Mon’s job—but she has proven very good at creating sympathy for the less fortunate of the galaxy, stirring up the will for action to protect those whose lives have been ravaged by war. So, that is what she does. (In her more private moments, she reflects that her life too has been ravaged by war, secretly pregnant with a soldier’s baby as she is. Then she feels guilty for comparing her situation to theirs.)

Palpatine listens with every appearance of agreement and interest. Padmé has never questioned his intentions or his morals, only his methods, but now she gets the distinct impression that he is bored and a little annoyed by her spiel about the Republic’s values, the inherent worth of every sentient life, and those principles they cannot afford to lose sight of even as the Separatist threat presses in. The Chancellor nods and hums at the correct points as she speaks, but it is not until her part is done and Mon starts speaking that she truly becomes troubled.

She has heard Mon make these same arguments many times before, so she feels comfortable tuning out the words and instead focusing on Palpatine’s reactions. This will help them later, when they are discussing next steps, to suss out how much support they can truly expect from the Chancellor. They already share the unspoken suspicion that the answer to this question is: not much. Again, nothing about the Chancellor’s façade would suggest that he is anything but sympathetic to their cause.

Nevertheless, Padmé gets the pressing feeling that there is a storm inside him, a spitting rage and a bitter disgust at Mon’s pacifist words that imply the Republic shouldn’t be concentrating so much power and building such capacity for violence. The temperature in the room seems to have dropped ten degrees, and Padmé desperately suppresses a shiver. Passing vehicles outside the office’s vast window appear to cast eerie shadows on Palpatine’s face and hands. They stretch out, inky tendrils that radiate from his person.

The churning in her stomach that Padmé had been successfully ignoring all day grows. She presses her lips together, glad her part in the conversation is already over. She tries to focus in on the words of her colleagues rather than observe Palpatine further. Somewhat succeeding, she realizes that Bail is now the one speaking. His part is the specifics of the bill: which planets need refugee camps, how the operations will be administered, and the statistics of how many people they can help at each site. This part is important, she knows, but she would much rather focus on the philosophy and idea of the thing—she is happy to leave the specifics to those more knowledgeable about the minutiae of social service administration than she.

Padmé wishes she were more passionate about the subject right now, to distract her from the way she still is too cold, despite the rather heavy velvet of her gown, and too hot all at once, from the worsening nausea. Blessedly, or so she thinks, Bail finishes his part, which means they will be able to leave after a few remarks from Palpatine. The remarks are the worst part, because when Palpatine makes eye contact with Padmé as he gives them, she imagines there is something sharp and predatory behind his gaze and the slimy cold darkness she is feeling spikes. Inexplicable dread worms its way into her heart and her breath catches in her throat.

When they finally turn to leave the office, Padmé is relieved. The coldness and strangeness she felt disappear as the doors slide shut with a soft thunk behind them, but the roiling in her gut remains. At least the strange underwater quality to her thoughts has dissipated and she hears Bail’s next words clearly.

“Padmé, are you alright?” he asks, “You look pale.”

It is taking much of her concentration not to vomit on the carpet right then and there, but she manages to make excuses to Mon and Bail.

“I’m fine, thank you, Bail. There’s something I have to take care of in my office, but I’ll meet you in yours soon to discuss.”

She phrases the last statement as a question, because their plan had been to go to his office straight away. Bail and Mon mercifully just nod, accepting her weak excuse, and she turns away from them as gracefully as she can manage. Padmé hurries to her office, which is thankfully nearby and has a small refresher attached to it, as fast as she can without appearing as if she is hurrying.

She is distantly impressed with herself that she makes it all the way there before she allows herself to throw up. Moteé fusses over her, clearly assuming that this is because of the baby, that the weakness in her legs and the bile on her chin are a side effect of the life that is growing inside her.

Moteé is right, but a small, disquieting voice in the back of Padmé’s head whispers that it’s _not in the way she thinks_.

* * *

Month 4

She thinks about him too much. Anakin. At this point, four months since she’s last seen him in person, he shouldn’t be occupying her thoughts as often as he does. Usually, the gaps between their meetings don’t stretch this long, though this is not the first time it’s happened, and usually by now she is almost able to pretend to herself that she is not married at all. The memory of falling asleep in their bed, wrapped up in his strong arms—the memory of his teasing laugh and his lips passionately capturing hers—has typically faded so much by now as to seem another life. This time is different. She has him with her, in a way, because of their child, but it only serves to throw his absence into sharper relief.

She called him a week or so ago. He was late to join the call and penitent about it, and they only got to talk for a short time before he had to leave again. They talked about Rex, his clone captain, with whom she feels a certain sort of kinship despite only having met him a few times. Anakin was worried about him, endearingly so, and she loves how he came to her for advice about helping his friend, like they are a normal married couple helping each other cope with their normal problems. Though the content of their call was not the most romantic, it is enough that she got to see him, alive and whole, and hear him, telling her he loves her.

Moteé and Dormé both agree that she is showing a little by now, but Anakin didn’t notice. She alternates between being relived and offended by this. Padmé reminds herself that this is what she wants: for him to remain in the dark until she can tell him properly. And, it is nice to have confirmation of what she already knows, that the heady magnetism between them goes beyond the physical. Anakin didn’t even realize her figure was changed, focusing instead on what she was saying to him.

Which is not to say that he isn’t attracted by her beauty—her high cheekbones and delicate eyelashes and (previously) slender waist and softly curving hips—or that part of his appeal to her isn’t his looks—he is tall and broad and muscular and miles of golden skin. The slope of his jaw and his full lips and that dashing scar across his eye _do_ _things_ to her—

She thinks about him too much, especially when she goes to bed alone. She blames this on the hormones, like the pregnancy books she has been reading in her scant free time tell her she should.

She lays awake for a while, trying to get comfortable, which she tells herself is because of her changing body and not because the other side of the bed is cold and empty. She is almost certain she isn’t asleep yet when she hears Anakin’s voice in her head.

 _I miss you,_ he says.

But that doesn’t make sense, because he hadn’t said that to her during their call (Just _I’m so sorry_ and _I know_ and _I love you too_ ). He’s told her he’s missed her often enough since they’ve been married, but he always says it in the past tense because it’s always something he says when they’re both together again. Upsetting the delicate balance of their life without the other is something they can’t do. It is too painful to miss each other in the present tense, so they only ever confess to it once they’ve been reunited.

It’s not a memory, hearing his voice. It could be, to anyone but her, but it’s not.

She rolls over on the bed, towards the side he sleeps on, slightly unsettled, and she’s met with the sight of his face. Anakin is resting on the pillow beside her, messy curls adorably smushed under his cheek, and there’s a cut on his chin that she _knows_ wasn’t there in the hologram last week. He’s sleeping. She has an absurd impulse to flinch away from this version of her husband that can’t possibly be there. But she doesn’t. This is what she’s wanted ever since he left—what she always wants. She closes her eyes.

As she falls asleep, she can still feel that he’s there, and not just from the way his breath gently tickles the bridge of her nose. There’s something else: like she’s sure in her bones that he is _with her_ in a way he has never been before. When she wakes up in the morning, the apparition of her Jedi husband is gone, but the sheets on his side of the bed are rumpled.

She comms Anakin the day after that—he’s been commanding the Outer Rim sieges this whole time, of course he has—and something in her chest squirms unpleasantly when she realizes, through the hologram, that there’s a familiar cut on his chin she’s never seen before.

* * *

Month 5

She wants desperately to tell someone: loudly and excitedly and receiving congratulations like she would if any of this were normal. Informing her handmaidens and security team doesn’t count, and even then, she let Dormé spread the news discretely to the rest of the staff. They’re all treating it as part of their job. The baby is a piece of information they need to know about if they are to protect her from threats both physical and political. If they have opinions about it, they don’t tell her. Padmé likes to think they’re happy for her, but she has no real clue.

The girls now need to dress her purposefully to hide the increasingly distinctive swell of her stomach. The use of clothing to serve a concrete and secretive purpose is not at all new to her. When before heavy fabric was used to protect her from blaster fire, it is now used to protect her midsection from prying eyes. Artful secret folds in her garments used to conceal weapons, but now they conceal something much more precious and much more forbidden. This aspect of her deception is actually a comfort. It reminds Padmé of home. Of a time when, somehow, even though she was a queen of a planet, things were simpler. Easier.

They debate for a long time whether they should start using the decoy maneuver again. On the one hand, having a non-pregnant person pretend to be her reduces the amount of chances anyone will have to notice the actual Senator Amidala is expecting a child. On the other hand, the more pronounced the differences between her and her impersonator, the more likely someone is to discover the switch. Senator Organa knows she has used body doubles in the past. He’ll realize and then he’ll know something is amiss.

So, she keeps going to the Senate building every day, trying to act as if nothing has changed.

Today, she and Bail are going out to the landing platform to meet a dignitary from Christophsis, as part of their ongoing effort to make sure humanitarian relief gets to where it is needed. She remembers that Anakin spent time on Christophsis at the beginning of the war, and Bail has reminded her that he was there too.

Not many Senators have taken part in the conflict like they have, in the sense that they’ve both been in active warzones before. Padmé has always gotten a heady kind of thrill in a battle, the adrenaline makes her blood sing enticingly, so much so that she sometimes found herself seeking out more dangerous or risky diplomatic missions. She doesn’t now; she has her own mission right here on Coruscant. She sometimes wants to ask Anakin if he feels the same way in a battle: if that’s the reason so many describe him as a great warrior and a hero. But then she’ll think of the nightmares he swears he doesn’t have. It would be rude and insensitive, she tells herself, to ask him if he _likes_ it. She doesn’t want to admit to herself that it’s also because she is afraid of the answer he might give. Shouldn’t it worry her if the father of her child finds war pleasurable? If she herself does?

Unfortunately, the conversation Bail is making with her is not a safer topic than the implications of their connections to Christophsis. He is telling her about how he and Breha are looking to adopt a child. They have tried several times for a biological child with little success, so now they are reaching out to adoption agencies and reading through files on orphans. They’re trying to decide whether they want to adopt an Alderaanian child, or one who has been made a tragic victim of the war on some other planet.

Padmé hums thoughtfully and sympathetically commiserates with him about all the red tape and decision-making that goes into adopting while you and your wife are also rulers of a planet.

She wants to blurt out that she too is expecting a child. The baby seems to want it too, because she can feel the telltale flutters in her stomach that mean her child is awake and moving. She represses the urge by thinking of how cruel it would be to unload her worries about the difficulties that come with an unmarried (as far as everyone knows) senator’s _unplanned_ pregnancy on Bail when he and his wife have tried for years. But, she knows her friend and colleague would be happy for her before anything else, because he is a good man and because he would understand that this baby is a _blessing_ rather than a mistake or a problem to be solved. She just wants _someone_ to be unreservedly pleased with the news.

The speeders and shuttles passing through the traffic lanes next to the platform create a gentle draft that ruffles both of their clothing. Padmé can tell the direction the wind is going by looking at Bail’s cloak, which is made in the understated yet dignified style he favors. The deep green fabric is being blown to the left, pressed against Bail’s right leg and hip as vehicles zip by. Padmé is standing next to him, and facing the same direction as he, so, logically her skirts should be doing the same thing.

Impossibly, her dress is pressed flush against her stomach instead, betraying the careful work her handmaidens have done.

With her gown behaving this way, she should feel wind directly in her face, but she doesn’t. Entirely lacking the horror she is sure Moteé is experiencing as she watches this from somewhere behind her, Padmé just fixes her eyes on the horizon, as if the only thing on her mind is picking out the dignitary’s approaching shuttle from the other traffic.

Bail doesn’t say anything, but she knows he wouldn’t, even if he _has_ noticed and put the pieces together. She doesn’t check to see if he is watching when she smooths her hand over her abdomen protectively, like she only does when she’s alone in her apartment. The gesture is so obviously characteristic of a pregnant woman that she has had to be very careful to not do it in company. She figures, with the strange behavior of the wind exposing her anyways, she might as well not deny herself the simple comfort.

Then Moteé coughs pointedly from where she has been observing the scene and Padmé reluctantly reaches to readjust the fabric. With as light as the wind is, it is surprisingly difficult to pull the skirt away from her body.

This is because, from the moment she noticed the wind, Padmé _wanted_ something like this to happen.

* * *

Month 6

Padmé has never been overly fond of going to Senate galas, banquets, parties, and the like. Or rather, she knew she _was_ fond of them, which was the problem. Because she enjoyed the food and wine and dressing up in elaborate and beautiful clothes, she felt guilty for taking pleasure in the things she knows many across the galaxy can’t. Never so much as at these events does the concrete experience of excess contrast so uncomfortably with Padmé’s abstract notion of the hardship that belongs to other beings.

Now, she dislikes these events for different reasons. The drink and fine clothing are no longer things she enjoys, because of the baby. It would be easy for her to blame her child for this loss, or Anakin, she supposes, but she blames the other Senators. Padmé likes to think that she would probably bear the lifestyle and appearance changes that come with being pregnant with good spirits if only she didn’t have to _hide them_.

Because she went to these events before, she is expected to go to them now, which is how she has found herself here, in this large, glittering room, conversing with Senator Taa. She is wearing a gown designed to not draw attention, is trying to keep her focus on the conversation and away from the chocolate truffles in the corner that she’s had a craving for before she even saw them, and is clutching a martini glass full of alcohol that she has to pretend to drink.

To make it worse, Taa has never been an engaging conversational partner. Right now, he’s going on about how the lack of term limits for galactic senators should continue, as proposed by a bill they’ll vote on tomorrow. Coming from anyone else, Padmé would already disagree with most of the points he’s making, but the fact that it is _Taa_ saying this makes keeping a polite veneer even more difficult. Common knowledge among most senators is that Taa is rather intensely disliked by many citizens of Ryloth. If planet had term limits on its senators, or if they were democratically elected instead of appointed, the chances are high that Padmé would not even be having this conversation.

At least when the constitutional amendment to expand _her_ term limit as queen was proposed, it was the Naboo who had wanted it, her own constituents asking her to continue to serve. And she still turned it down. If Taa had managed to learn anything about her, a member of his own party, in all the years they had both been serving in the Senate, he might have steered towards a different conversation topic. As is typical for him, however, he hasn’t, and Padmé is now itching to correct him.

At a natural lull in his drawling speech, she jumps in, trying to keep her poise.

“But, Senator Taa, the Senate is all about working together to find mutually beneficial arrangements on problems of galactic importance. Fresh perspectives are practically a requirement for serving that purpose to the fullest. And it is not in the spirit of the Republic for any one system to build up too much influence over others, which is what happens if certain senators are allowed to stay too long in their positions.”

“Oho! Senator Amidala,” Taa chortles deeply, “you do have a way with words. But you and I both know being a senator is a demanding job without its perks! Don’t good senators deserve to be rewarded for their performance?”

 _No_ , Padmé thinks. Doing their duty to serve the people should be more than enough reward. Her fingers twitch and tighten around the stem of her still-full martini glass.

“Surely, you don’t think that an individual senator’s wealth or prestige should outweigh the needs of the Republic?”

Orn Free Taa stills. Even the great jiggling rolls of fat underneath his chin are unmoving. She has rhetorically trapped him—what good citizen of the Republic is going to admit they think their personal comfort is more important than the health of the union? —so perhaps his reaction is not surprising.

“I don’t think an individual senator’s wealth or prestige should outweigh the needs of the Republic,” Senator Taa repeats expressionlessly, in a way that is familiar to her, yet she is sure she has never heard him use that tone. She had expected him to deny it, but not like this, repeating her exact words back to her without any of his typical congeniality.

Neither of them say anything for a long moment. Padmé begins to panic internally. Maybe Taa is much more self-aware of his reputation for gluttony and selfishness than she had thought, and her question has struck a nerve. It is unlike her to have read someone so wrongly and offended them as a result. Senator Taa is an influential senator, on account of how long he has been in the Senate. And they’re supposed to be allies, no less. This could be very bad.

“I’m glad you agree, Senator,” she offers as warmly as she can manage. Taa stares at her a moment more before giving his head an almost imperceptible shake. His brow furrows in contemplation and he fixes his gaze at a spot just beyond her shoulder. At first she thinks he is angry with her, but then she reconsiders that assessment. It’s almost as if what she has said is making him contemplate his previous actions and beliefs. Admittedly, that _had_ been her goal, but she hadn’t actually expected to get through to him.

“Well,” Padmé continues brightly, thinking she can kill two birds with one stone, “speaking of the perks of the job, I have been absolutely dying to try some of the chocolates over there. Please excuse me.”

Hopefully her words have been taken as an olive branch—confession that she too has her vices and doesn’t mean to judge him for his (though she does judge him nonetheless). The maneuver has the added benefit of allowing her to remove herself from his company.

It’s even the truth: she really does have a craving for those chocolate truffles right now, which is probably the baby’s fault. She knows Anakin has a sweet tooth, that could be why. The thought washes away her lingering uneasiness and brings a genuine smile to her lips.

Senator Taa merely nods at her, uncharacteristically silent, as she moves away.

Later, about to bite into her second heavenly piece of chocolate, she realizes when exactly she has seen someone act like Orn Free Taa just did.

A Jedi mind trick.

There are no Jedi at this party.

She barely remembers anything from the rest of the evening, too caught up in thinking about what could have caused the change in Senator Taa. Her stomach twists in a way she thought she had mostly left behind after the first trimester because she keeps returning to every odd thing that has happened to her in the past months, the way her fingers unconsciously clenched around the martini glass, and the conclusion that _she did this to him._

* * *

Month 7

She keeps a list, hidden in a nondescript folder on her personal datapad, of baby names. Almost all of them are boy’s names because, for some reason, Padmé is very sure that the baby she is carrying is a boy. She wants very badly to believe this is due to motherly intuition, but the mounting evidence from the past almost seven months says otherwise. None of the few girl’s names that she adds feel right to her, but she makes an effort to add them anyways. Maybe, if the baby really turns out to be a girl, she’ll let Anakin pick the name.

Tonight, she’s sitting up in bed, unable to go to sleep because the baby has been kicking her, trying to decide whether she likes the name _Luke_ or _Keyan_ better.

“What do you think, baby?” she murmurs, rubbing the side of her stomach she thinks the baby’s legs are near. The books she’s been reading seem to agree that the baby can hear her voice from inside the womb, and that some babies seem to recognize their parents’ voices when or even before they are born. Though she obviously can’t talk to the baby unless she’s sure she’s in private, she’s been trying to make sure that the kid will know at least one of its parents.

That line of thought earns her a rush of bitterness and frustration with Anakin. He’s _never_ been away from Coruscant for this long before, and he just _had_ to pick the months after he got her pregnant to set the record. Her son kicks her again. Of course, Padmé knows that Anakin doesn’t choose where the war sends him or when, and that he probably wants badly to come back to Coruscant too. Maybe he’d find a way to _make_ the Jedi Council send him back home if he knew she was pregnant.

Her fingers twitch on her datapad and she almost clicks away from her list to start writing him—to say _to hell with it_ and tell him he’s going to be a father over text. Wherever he is right now, it must be really far out, because the reception is so bad, they’ve resorted to sending messages over text channels instead of by hologram. This has had the benefit of making it easier to hide the pregnancy from him. She receives another kick to snap her out of the temptation.

 _Stupid woman,_ she thinks. _He’ll_ make _them send him back to Coruscant_. The only time that’s happened, it’s because he got himself captured and tortured by Count Dooku. _Back to Coruscant on a stretcher_. She doesn’t want that. Padmé drags her thoughts out of that dark place and back to happier things.

“Where were we? Are you a Keyan?” Nothing. “Or a Luke?” She receives a jolt under her ribcage and winces. Not where she was expecting to feel it, but maybe that’s a tiny elbow instead of a tiny foot.

“Alright little one, I’ll keep that in mind,” she says with a smile in her voice, “are you going to let your mama get some sleep now?”

Padmé has been trying to call her son “little one” because she’s under the vague impression that this is what Anakin would call him, if he were here. She distantly recalls him referring to Ahsoka that way once or twice. No doubt teenage Ahsoka disliked it, but the concept is endearing nonetheless.

Receiving another kick in response, which more likely is a _no_ than a _yes,_ Padmé sighs, sets the datapad aside, turns out the lights, and settles into her bed.

At first, the baby is still kicking, and she feels relieved when it finally stops, allowing her to fall asleep. However, the waking world is much kinder to her than her eventual dreams.

The first concrete thing Padmé registers is that she’s struggling through a smoky red haze. Ash collects in her mouth as she calls out, trying to determine where she is and if there’s anyone there with her. She picks up her pace and the world starts to resolve around her into a veritable furnace of oppressively hot, dry air that swirls around the landing platform she finds herself on, surrounded by bubbling lava.

Then she’s in Anakin’s arms, which should make everything okay, except that this time it doesn’t. He doesn’t feel right. Her husband’s presence on this volcano world is somehow cold and slimy, like coagulated blood. She draws back from him and looks into wild eyes that would be barely recognizable as his if not for the fact that they are on his face. Unbidden—the thought is both her own and not—she thinks that he _does_ look like a man who is capable of killing children.

What?

Reflexively, she curls her arms around her stomach, which is how she registers the fact that she’s still pregnant in this dream, whatever— _whenever_ —it is.

(That’s absurd, dreams don’t have a _when_ because they’re _not real_. Except for the fact that this one definitely _does_ have a when and it is the future.)

In the next instant Padmé is somewhere else, and she is not in her own body. As nothing more than a cosmic observer, floating somewhere in a plane beyond the physical, she hears her husband screaming in agony. She’s never heard him like that before but she knows it is him, somehow. Laying on a medical table before her is a hulking black contraption that resembles a very tall human man in its stature, despite the fact there is no flesh to be seen. Its head is a black mask that vaguely resembles a skull. It has a sort of triangular grill for a mouth but it has the same unnerving, soulless, black eyes as every skull she has ever seen in a holodrama. It wears chest plate armor that reminds her of what her husband used to wear into battle but doesn’t anymore. Anakin’s screaming is drowned out by impossibly loud, mechanized breathing, so regular as to be unnatural. She thinks it must be coming from this strange and terrifying dark thing.

Then she is observing another scene entirely. It is set in a hallway that strongly resembles a Republic prison block. Inside the cell is a woman she’s never met, dressed entirely in white, staring down the same dark creature from before. Next to it floats a spherical droid, with countless sharp and menacing appendages protruding from sleek black casing that matches its handler. The droid slips a needle into the woman’s arm while the tall dark thing holds her still with cruel gloved hands. The woman’s body twitches and then Padmé’s dream is filled with more cries of pain. Her heart breaks for this nameless woman the same as it did when the screams were Anakin’s.

The scene changes again and she is above a yawning chasm. On a thin platform is a young man in a raggedy, dirty jumpsuit. He clings to some kind of contraption at the end of the walkway, feet braced on a thin section of piping that is the only thing separating him from a very long fall. This man is screaming too, a different kind of agony, the kind that comes when you learn a terrible truth. His knees buckle a bit and Padmé’s heart is in her throat. _Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall._ She looks to where he grips metal to keep himself upright and finds that his right arm ends in a stump. The same arm that Anakin is missing but severed at the wrist instead of above the elbow. She desperately wants to tell him that it will be okay, except that she has no idea what’s going on, and really, she doesn’t think Anakin _has_ been okay since he lost his arm.

Padmé ends up back in the same landscape where she started. She can feel her body again, which is good, but she can’t breathe, which is very, very bad. Anakin is directly in front of her, his hand—the mechanical one—outstretched towards her, but she can’t get her mind past the crushing pressure on her throat or the fuzzy blackness creeping in from the edges of her vision to ascertain whether he is reaching out to help her or hurt her.

She slams back into consciousness and gasps for breath. Struggling against the weight of the baby in her womb to push herself up on her elbows, Padmé tries to make sense of what she saw. For the first time in her life, she feels the need to make a distinction between what she has _seen_ in her sleep and what she has _dreamed_.

Years ago, when he had escorted her to Naboo, Padmé had asked Anakin how he could be certain his dreams about his mother were visions of the future. He had started to give a stumbling explanation about the way the Force felt or something, but then he gave up, instead saying, _I just know_.

What Padmé _just knows_ is that the Force seems to be incapable of sending anyone a dream that isn’t filled to the brim with suffering.

* * *

Month 8

The Separatists attack Coruscant, and they kidnap Chancellor Palpatine, and everything is very, very chaotic. None of them are quite sure whether they should be working to do something about the situation or staying where they are to protect what’s left of the Republic’s government. Most of the other senators are terrified out of their minds that Grievous managed to take Palpatine, whom Padmé has been trying her best to avoid for months because she still gets that cold feeling around him (she’d be lying if she said that’s not part of the reason she’s been a leader in forming the Delegation of 2,000). She would never admit this to anyone, but when she hears the Chancellor is in danger she has to ruthlessly suppress a smile because they might finally call Anakin back to Coruscant for this and because of her borderline treasonous conviction that it would be better for the Republic if Palpatine were no longer in power.

The Force wants him dead. Padmé is getting better than she’d ever thought she’d be at realizing things like that.

She has an argument with Captain Typho, her first real fight with him in a long time, because being pregnant means she’s been much less inclined to do the reckless things that made him so angry with her in the past. As soon as she hears about the Separatist warship that General Skywalker has crashed into the planet, she tells Typho she is leaving her office, where they have all been locked down for the past half a day, for the Senate building’s landing dock, alone. Typho argues that there might still be Separatists in the building and Padmé argues back, quite sensibly in her opinion, that they wouldn’t be bringing the Chancellor back here if it was still at all dangerous.

She wins, though in the end Typho has no real authority to stop her from doing what she wants, which is how she comes to be lurking in the shadows behind a giant pillar watching her husband jog away from Bail Organa’s departing figure and towards her. When he reaches her, Anakin gathers her close to him and holds her tight in his strong arms, twirling her around in a joyous circle.

When the firm swell of her pregnant stomach presses against his flat abs, she feels a jolt of surprise and confusion run through her entire body, almost like what she imagines getting shocked would feel like. In truth, she barely notices it, the emotion that should have no logical instigator, because she’s breathing in his scent—leather and engine grease and plasma—and feeling the disheveled curls of his hair under her palms. When he sets her back on the ground, she feels as if she has been living with the world tilted off its rightful axis by one degree without her realizing it and now he has returned it singlehandedly to perfect level.

Maybe not _perfect_ level, because she still has to tell him.

He lets out a little huff of breath that she can’t quite decipher, but as he does a hundred different tangled emotions hit her all at once, only for a split second and then they’re gone.

He tells her he’s missed her (past tense, as is their way) and remarks how long it’s been. Anakin says it in the same smooth tone of his he always uses during their private reunions, but this time she feels there’s a hint of accusation in it. The only reason for this she can think of is that he already suspects about the baby—and that she hasn’t told him. She supposes it makes sense: the Force let her know of the child’s existence before she was told, too. And, Anakin has arguably more physical evidence than she had, if he was paying any attention to the way her body felt against his a moment ago.

An implicit defense against his accusation, she responds that she was worried he could have been killed. He returns that they’ve been apart for a lifetime, which, if he _doesn’t_ already suspect, is a terribly coincidental turn of phrase. It _has_ been a lifetime, in a sense, since they saw each other: their son’s lifetime.

Anakin kisses her again and then his mouth starts to find her neck, which really is everything she’s wanted, what she’s gone to bed thinking about for so many nights, and it’s like his passion is fueling her own fire. But his lack of self-control grates on her. She’s been painstakingly hiding _his child_ from the rest of the world for months, and he’s about to blow the whole ruse right here because _he’s_ the one who got tired of hiding! So, they have a micro-disagreement about the secrecy of their marriage, something they can rarely manage to avoid in any conversation. Then they hastily make up, as is their habit too, because they have precious little time together to spend it disagreeing.

By next telling her she’s trembling, he’s given her an opening and she thinks he knows it. He _has_ been paying attention to the way she feels in his arms. It’s as if she’s standing at the very edge of a cliff and her husband is there, nudging her forward so she’ll step off it.

And she does, because she still trusts him.

(She’s thrust the content of that dream to the darkest back corner of her mind, because even though she thinks she’s gotten better at trusting the Force since she first felt it, she won’t trust it _that_ far.)

She finally tells him, out loud, that she’s pregnant.

Standing in front of a dam that’s breaking would feel just like this. Wave after wave of emotion rolls over her at the confirmation, and none of them is the intense nervousness that has settled in her own blood. The first is shock, which she supposes is the continuation of what she felt being suppressed after they first touched. Then awe, then panic, worry, dread, regret, frustration, weariness, trepidation, and then a shaky something that it takes her a second to identify as _hope_.

A shy smile graces her husband’s face and soon enough he’s telling her this is wonderful.

For maybe the first time, she is grateful for her newfound connection to the Force. Without it she might have thought he was lying, but his words are given their proper weight by the fact that she can _feel_ his joy and delight and wonder and love as if it were her own.

* * *

Month 9

She never makes it to the last month because the twins are born early. The Force hadn’t told her there was more than one child, but she might be able to forgive it for that. What she can’t forgive it for is the way she begins to feel empty after her children leave her womb—leaving her body an empty skeleton of something more.

**Author's Note:**

> I got to thinking how lonely Padme's pregnancy must have been, because it seems like a hard enough thing when you DO have a support system and you can tell everyone. Add in some newfound, slightly creepy Force powers, and I had myself a story concept!
> 
> Honestly, this seems like a ripe concept for an AU that could stop Anakin from falling to the dark side (I turn everything into that, lol). But I wrote it so that it could fit into canon, too. Also, every time I watch ROTS I can't understand how, for all the tight hugging Anakin and Padme seem to do, he doesn't feel that she's late-stage pregnant WITH TWINS. So this is a little explanation for that too, while still fitting in with the dialogue.
> 
> I make several references here: stuff from Queen's Shadow, and the "Cat and Mouse" and "Shadow Warrior" episodes of TCW, as well as ROTS and the OT.


End file.
